Comment by simonboulton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonboulton | Hacker News Reader

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The UK was in a single market and a customs union which it decided to leave. For those international readers not familiar with what's gone on, here's an analogy. You're in a gym club. You pay a fee. And there are membership rules. You get to use the machines and pool for free. You meet other members and have watercooler chats. There's a doorman who stops undesirable visitors. You get a vote to decide on the way in which the club runs.

Then you decide that being in the club isn't for you any more. So you leave.

And you don't have to pay the membership fee. But you can't use the machines or pool any more. or have any other benefits that you had as a member.

Most people would agree that is reasonable.

The UK left the biggest free market and customs union group in the world and asked to be treated like any other country not in the EU.

The EU has done nothing more than accede to the UK's wishes to leave the EU. It seems that some people who voted the UK's departure from the UK actually had little idea what that meant in practical terms and are now complaining about the loss of their membership benefits.

I think that's a bad analogy, because the gym club does not benefit from your using the gym, only your paying dues. The ideal gym member pays dues but never comes.

By contrast, the EU benefits from buying things from and selling things to the UK. Products made in the UK did not suddenly become less safe because of Brexit.

I think you could have exercised your thinking in another direction by improving the analogy by e.g. considering a cooperative gym where in addition to fees, the members are required to take an active part in maintenance of the facilities and equipment, enforcement of the rules, hiring and supervising the day-to-day staff (including top paid management), and so forth, and in exchange are not merely allowed access to and use of the facilities, but a share of any surpluses returned from its activities (applied as discounts, or returned outright as a rebate).

Sometimes upon finding a flaw in an analogy it is at least self-instructive to consider whether the flaw can be repaired rather than abandoned :: sometimes upon finding a flaw in a cooperative venture it is at least worth considering how the flaw can be repaired rather than withdrawing from the cooperative venture.

Analogies are not tools for arguments. They change the environment of the situation, tweak severity, and cut corners and successively (and in fact criminally) gloss over important details in the real scenario.

Is hyperbole? "Criminally", really?

Analogies are perfectly fine ways to throw away superfluous detail to focus on salient matters. Of course there are bad analogies, including, as you imply, those deliberately chosen so as to throw away relevant detail, however one can still improve such analogies rather than reject them -- let alone all analogies -- out of hand.

Not only are they tools for arguments -- proof by existence -- but they are frequently useful tools for resolving arguments, precisely because they can help choose which are the important details in the real scenario.

"Your analogy can be improved by <insert idea>" is also simply more friendly than "all analogies are terrible" or even "your analogy is terrible", which is something to bear in mind if you enjoy friendly debates.

> the EU benefits from buying things from and selling things to the UK

English economist David Ricardo made a similar statement in the early 19th century. The example he used was Portuguese wine being traded for English cloth. He said both countries benefited from their specializations - England producing cloth, Portugal producing wine. Ricardo's work is a foundation for a modern view of comparative advantage and free trade.

English economist Joan Robinson revisited this example over a century later. She asked what the results over the past century were for the economies of England and Portugal in pursuing this course - one country industrializing to build textile mills, one country remaining more agricultural with much less industrialization. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what she found in that investigation, the answer is obvious.

As far as bad analogies go this one is high up there with the worst. The UK isn’t asking to ship things to Poland or Slovakia or France. Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland have a long and ingrained relationship that makes a separation between them near impossible, and the UK is feeling it. This has nothing to do with the main EU bloc.

A lot of people in mainland Europe are pained that the UK left, and in my own opinion (as a non-European), it’s more of a show of pity on themselves than sympathetic with the British. And so, they rejoice at any news of problems and use it as an opportunity to remind the rest of the world that they're right, the EU is nirvana, and the UK is matching to hell. It’s tiring.

> The UK isn’t asking to ship things to Poland or Slovakia or France. Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland have a long and ingrained relationship that makes a separation between them near impossible, and the UK is feeling it. This has nothing to do with the main EU bloc

It has everything to do with the EU, because Northern Ireland and Ireland don't have a land border because they both were are a part of the EU. The UK wants to leave the customs union allowing the lack of border, while keeping no border, which is practically impossible. It's entirely the UK's fault here - they want their cake and to eat it too. It cannot possibly work, and the only viable long term solution is for Ireland to unite.

It's entirely the UK's fault here

Free movement between the UK and Eire long pre-dates the existence of the EU.

Ireland is free to leave the EU and negotiate with the UK if it would like to start back up such free movement. Somehow I doubt they want to.

the uk joining the eu common market in 1993 is what triggered the removal of immigration and customs checks on the ireland border. the gfa in 1998 led to the end of military checkpoints

All analogies are imperfect, as is mine, though I would hesitate to say that it could be considered to be one of the worst. I would agree with other opinions which point out that it's more of a co-operative club run by and for the benefit of the members.

I disagree with your point about the the UK not asking to ship things to Poland or Slovakia or France. This is just plain wrong. Of course we are asking to do these things. In fact I have personal experience of this, as we actually do ship things from the UK to Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the EU. I now have to fill out custom forms and get approval before I can do this. Most bizarrely, I have to do it if I want to ship from where we are in Liverpool (in the UK) to Belfast (also in the UK). I have to get a permit to go into the county of Kent if I want to send a vehicle through the Channel Tunnel to France (£300 fine if I don't). I sometimes think that I have fallen into a dystopian parallel universe.

You are correct that NI and the Republic have a long and ingrained relationship, but the separation between them was largely removed only quite recently by the Good Friday Agreement which has brought relative peace to the region. It has everything to do with the EU because the EU were sensible enough to not countenance the re-imposition of a border between Northern and Southern Ireland and so an agreement (the Northern Ireland Protocol) was agreed between the EU and the UK which puts the border relatively speaking in the Irish Sea. So Northern Ireland is still effectively in the EU customs union and single market. If you think that's complicated, we haven't even started yet :) I'm not surprised you're tired.

As far as the EU is concerned, I don't think that many people in mainland Europe really care that much. They have much more interesting things to do. Those that do care think we're a bit stupid. The EU project will carry on quite happily without the UK. I don't see much evidence of rejoicing on the part of Europeans. Also, quite a few Europeans don't have a terribly high opinion of the EU and certainly don't see it as a Nirvana; and the UK will not be marching to hell. Things are getting more expensive and some opportunities have diminished, but it's not an Armageddon as some would have you believe. Leaving the EU was rather pointless, that's all :|

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